Software Factoryan experimental R&D laboratory on
entrepreneurship, research and education
Pekka Abrahamsson
Professor
SEMAT, Zurich
Presentation 17.3.2010
CONTENTS
• Overview
• Intro to the three facets of the
Software Factory• Entrepreneurship
• Research
• Education
• Software Factory Course details
• MicroVC concept
• Xtra slides• The plans for the grand opening
Overview: Challenges
• Technology develops rapidly in the field of software engineering.
• Software education has had hard time in keeping up with current developments.
• Often there is a gap between the research, education and practice, which all seem to travel in their own pace.
• Software Factory creates a common, co-operative platform for software business, basic & applied software engineering research and education.
Three Functions of Software Factory at UH
Software factory is an experimental software lab aiming to stimulate
Growth business: high-expectation entrepreneurships (Curley, Formica 2009)
Cross-disciplinary research: Both basic and applied, empirical software research
Education: Empirical computational thinking (Johnson 2009)
Software factory physically is located at Univ. of Helsinki but operates in global space. Satellite hubs are being set-up in several locations globally.
Software Factory Use Cases
INTEREST GROUP
Learn Share Grow
Companies • Global Software Development
• Open Innovation• future skill and
competence needs
• business-driven prototypes
Investors • software product development
• prospects• expectations
• spin-offs
Researchers • software business • experiments • Cloud software competences
Students • professional skills (e.g., teamwork)
• teaching material• lessons learnt
• careers
Business facet: High Expectation Entrepreneurship
• A 7-week software business
prototype engine
• A series of experiments running
2010-2013 under the Cloud
Software research program
• First business prototype in
business driven alpha tests by
1.3.2010.
• Co-operation with University of
Helsinki, Helsinki Univ. of
Technology and Metropolia
Business facet: High Expectation Entrepreneurship
• The backbone of a successful economy is entrepreneurship
• Finnish software business lacks high-expectation entrepreneurship start-ups
• Software factory targets to stimulate the following spin-offs and business prototypes 2010
• MicroVC: A people/ community driven
business angel model for Europe
• ScienceBook: A collaboration engine
for small groups working together
• EuropeToday: A mash-up newspaper
print-ready in your printer tray
• ChineseMobile: A community service
for identifying new mobile services for
chinese markets (service available
only in chinese)
• … You tell us! And let’s implement it!
Research facet
• Software Factory is designed to operate as a test-platform for novel tools, techniques and methods.
• Software Factory is equipped with multiple means to collect data including interview, observation, video/audio (when necessary) and seamless measurements as well.
• Each research target has its own research design plan to guide the research work.
Preliminary research topics already idenfied
• Software Factory is launched with several
research goals already identified including:
• Bottom-up modeling by Pietu Pohjalainen (PhD)
• Ambient user-experience by Timo Jokela (post-
doc)
• Psychometric measurements & teamwork by
Fabian Fagerholm (PhD)
• Web-service maintentance by Juha Gustafsson
(PhD)
• Validity of observation as a means to collect valid
software engineering research data by Pekka
Abrahamsson
Education in Software Factory
• While software is a knowledge medium, software development is about learning.
• Software Factory, therefore, is ultimately a learning vehicle. It operates at three layers of education:
• Software Factory course (8op)• Software Factory integrated to other
software courses in University of Helsinki and outiside
• PhD training & education
Software Factory course
• Software Factory course is an intensified course setting where students learn about
• Real-life agile development setting with
deadlines and deliverables
• Teamwork dynamics
• Incremental, iterative & continous planning
• Integration, testing in web-development
• Implementation technologies
• As a result of 7 week of work, a concrete business prototype is to be delivered to real markets
Software Factory course expectations
• Software Factory course is not a traditional course. The course is intense, exciting and full of surprises (like real life).
• Software Factory operates four days a week,
6 hours a day (be aware of this!)
• Team decides the working hours
• Team decides the split up of tasks between
different sub-teams
• Teams self-organize
• This is an advanced course; thus, you use
all the skills aqcuired in your studies to
perform to meet the hightest expectations